Chapter 4 004-Echoes in Ink

The journal was warm.

That was the first thing I noticed. As if it had been held tightly for hours, sweat soaking through the cracked leather cover. My fingers hovered over the pages like they might explode.

Bea sat on the cold marble floor, hugging her knees, eyes red and puffy but determined.

"I found it behind the piano," she said quietly. "Taped to the inside of the soundboard. Kellan said if anything ever happened, I should go there."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I asked.

"Because I didn't want to read it."

Eloise stood behind me, arms crossed, unusually silent. Even she knew this was a moment that didn't need her usual sarcasm.

I flipped open the journal.

The first page was a mess of symbols-drawings of Blackwell's crest, the moon cycle, names I didn't recognize crossed out in angry slashes. Then I saw it.

If someone's reading this, it means I didn't make it out.

My throat closed.

They lied about Mom. They're lying about everything. The Society isn't just about legacy. It's about blood. It's about power. And it's about sacrifice.

Sacrifice?

I flipped to the next page, hands trembling.

Damien isn't the worst of them. Not even close. Auden knows more than he says. But I think he's trying to protect me. Or maybe protect himself. I can't tell anymore.

Auden?

I felt the breath leave my lungs.

The headmaster's not just a puppet. He's a gatekeeper. There's something beneath the school-literally. I followed Theo once. He doesn't know I saw. There's a door under the archives. I think that's where they took her. Mom. I think she's alive.

"Under the archives," I said aloud.

Theo, who had silently appeared behind Eloise, stiffened.

"You followed me?" he asked.

"You led him there," I shot back. "Where is it?"

He hesitated, then ran a hand through his hair. "There's a hatch. Old maintenance system. I only found it once. I didn't go in."

"Then you're going in now."

The archives smelled like mold and rotting paper. The air was thick, humid, like it hadn't been disturbed in decades.

Theo led us past ancient filing cabinets and faded portraits of long-dead alumni. In the farthest corner, behind a shelf of water-damaged textbooks, he pulled up a section of floorboards.

Below was a steel hatch with a strange emblem carved into it-an hourglass crossed with a sword.

Bea gasped. "That's the mark of the Inner Ring."

"The what?" Eloise asked.

"The true core of the Society. Most members never even know it exists."

The hatch groaned as Theo twisted the rusted handle. A blast of cold, stale air rushed up to meet us.

Eloise backed up. "Nope. Nuh-uh. I've seen The Descent. I'm not dying in a tunnel with you people."

I went first.

The tunnel was narrow, made of stone and dirt, barely wide enough to walk. My flashlight flickered as we moved, shadows twisting with every step.

We reached a dead end after twenty minutes.

But it wasn't a wall.

It was a door.

Iron. With the same mark etched into its center.

And a keyhole shaped like a snake's eye.

"I've seen that shape before," Bea whispered.

"Where?"

She pulled out a necklace-a strange, jagged key on a thin chain. "Kellan gave this to me. Said I'd know when to use it."

I took it, slid it into the keyhole, and twisted.

The door groaned open.

The room beyond was... wrong.

Not just old. Ancient.

Candles still burned in sconces. The walls were lined with strange murals-figures in masks, blood rituals, what looked like childbirth in cages.

In the center of the room was a stone table.

And shackles.

I froze.

"Is this where they brought Mom?" I whispered.

"No," said a voice behind us. "This is where they made you."

We spun around.

Auden.

He stood at the tunnel's mouth, eyes dark and unreadable.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I followed you."

"Why?"

"Because I knew you'd find it."

"Why didn't you tell me this existed?"

"Because I was trying to protect you from it."

"From what?"

He walked past me, slowly, as if his legs didn't want to obey.

"This is where it all began. Blackwell wasn't built on education. It was built on control. Generations of arranged bloodlines. Rituals. Binding pacts."

He ran a hand over the stone table.

"This room was used to breed heirs. The Society didn't trust the outside world. They wanted perfect legacies. So they kept it in the family."

I took a step back.

"You're saying-"

"Your mother didn't just disappear. She was taken. Because she broke the chain. She loved someone outside the bloodline. That was forbidden."

My pulse thundered in my ears.

"Then who's Cecilia?"

Auden looked at me.

"She's not your sister."

My stomach dropped.

"She's your cousin. Your mother was forced to carry Marcus's child after her own lover died. That child is Cecilia."

I thought I might be sick.

Bea sank to the floor, whispering, "They're monsters."

Auden turned to me, voice low.

"And they want you next."

We didn't go back to our dorms.

We crashed in Eloise's attic hideaway above the theater wing. She had an old futon, emergency cookies, and an illegal space heater she named "Mr. Toasty."

Bea was asleep on the floor, Theo staring blankly at the ceiling.

I sat beside Auden.

"You knew," I whispered.

"I knew some."

"You lied."

"I withheld."

"Same thing."

He looked at me, eyes burning.

"I wanted to keep you from becoming like them."

"I already am."

"No," he said fiercely. "You're not. You ask questions. You care. You burn the system instead of bending to it."

I hated that I wanted to believe him.

Hated how close we were sitting. How his eyes locked on my lips.

I leaned forward before I could stop myself.

His mouth met mine like a secret too long buried.

Rough. Desperate.

But in his kiss, I felt it.

A warning.

He was trying to lose himself in me.

Like he already knew he was about to be taken away.

The next morning, Auden was gone.

No text. No note.

Just his jacket folded over the arm of the couch, and the silver ring he always wore left on the windowsill.

Eloise checked the security cams on her hacked laptop.

Nothing.

Like he'd vanished into thin air.

Except...

Bea screamed.

We turned.

The side of her face had gone pale, her hand shaking as she pointed to the wall above Mr. Toasty.

Someone had scrawled a message in red:

Your silence won't save you. Your blood will.